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Episode 609: Official Business
Official Business is the ninth episode of season 6 of Burn Notice. Synopsis Fiona helps a CIA asset who is being targeted by a black-market businessman. Jesse and Sam infiltrate a mercenary training camp and attempt to track down a sniper. Spy Facts When you're posing as a potential client of a private military company, it doesn't pay to be subtle. A private army is a very high dollar item and the people who rent them tend to be super rich and not afraid to show it. It's an expensive cover ID, but if you do it right, it's worth every penny. You want your target focused less on your credentials and more on the make of your watch and the size of your wallet. One of the biggest challenges in covert operations, is working with civilian assets. It's often as much about keeping the asset from falling apart, as it is about gathering intelligence. Kind of like babysitting, only with a gun to your head. For a spy, deep cover assignments often mean going into enemy territory alone and unarmed. If you want to survive, you better have a support team you can trust watching your back. Modifications like nitrous oxide injectors and ultra-light carbon fiber body work, are great in movies. But in real life, spies need cars that won't raise suspicions if they're searched. The speed, power, and handling you need, better come factory installed; because if the wrong person gets curious it could mean a bullet to the head. The private military industry is worth 100 billion a year worldwide and growing. It's secretive, well armed, and almost completely unregulated by international law. Which is great if you need to hire your own private army; but, not so good if you need to steal their classified intelligence. Which means sometimes you have to rely on your powers of persuasion. The easiest way to open a door with an electric lock is to cut the electricity. Unless your target has a fail-secure door designed to stay locked during a power outage. To get past a fail-secure door, you can try to steal the entry code; but, if you have access to the manufacturers schematics, it's much easier to wire in a duplicate circuit and trip the lock yourself. Whether you're in a market in Syria, or a boutique in Miami, getting supplies to operatives in the field is always dangerous. Often, you have to spot a contact, arrange an excuse to approach, and make a drop – and do it all while looking like you're just out for a day's shopping. They key to successfully bribing someone who resists an initial approach, is research and observation. You need to know as much as you can about your target – his principles, his weaknesses, his dreams. With most by-the-book targets, it's usually just a matter of making them feel like they're not being paid to do something wrong, they're being rewarded for doing something right. Sabotage is most often used to destroy a target's vehicles, but not always. Simply damaging an enemies car can be very useful as well, as long as you can get your own team in position to do the repairs. Getting people to evacuate a building is a lot harder than you might think. Most people don't pay much attention to fire alarms unless they see flames. Carbon monoxide alarms on the other hand tend to get plenty of attention. People are reluctant to ignore a threat that's invisible, odorless and deadly. And, best of all, any home with a gas line has a built in delivery system. Any safe can be cracked with enough time and the right equipment. Even high-end models with security features like glass re-lockers – sheets of glass in the wall that shatter if you try to drill through them. Hit one, and a locking bolt seals the safe permanently. But if you come prepared with a drill point diagram and a good bore-scope, you can bypass the re-locker and find the combination by studying the wheel pack. Then, you just have to hope that your plan to get out of the building goes as well as your plan to get into the safe. If you need to get out of a zip tie and you can't cut yourself free, your best option is to find a shim. You can make a shim out of almost anything that's thin enough and flexible enough to slip into the cable tie and separate the teeth from the ratchet mechanism. Of course, that's easier said than done if your hands are tied. Most people know that Carbon Monoxide is a poisonous gas. Inhale too much, and it displaces the oxygen in your blood stream and suffocates you from the inside out. What most people don't know, is that in a confined space with a vapor-to-air mixture anywhere between twelve and seventy-five percent, it's also a powerful explosive. Full Recap The group that bought the gun is the Pryon Group, and its CEO is Jack Vale. Michael needs to get into Pryon's system. He thinks they should pose as someone in the market for private military services. He asks Sam to set up a dummy corporation. He also needs to look like a billionaire and asks Sam to have his girlfriend help with some accessories. Michael, decked out in fancy threads and in an awesome sports car. Michael and Sam head to a restaurant to meet with Vale and one of his associates. They start to talk business and Vale brags about the quality of his snipers. Michael wants to meet the sniper he's going to pay for. When Vale hesitates, Michael threatens to take his business elsewhere. Vale stops them from leaving. He offers to have his associate, Thompson, take them to their South Carolina training facility. Vale and Thompson leave, and Sam isn't sure about Michael's plan to accept the South Carolina trip offer. Michael has plans to try to play Thompson for information after having noticed that Thompson seemed to really want Michael's Rolex. Michael calls Fi, who's dealing with some surprise guests: Bailey and Manaro from the CIA. They refer to Fi as their "newest asset." Michael and Fi are both shocked. Michael and Sam head to the loft and tells the CIA guys Fi isn't going to work for them. Sam is still livid about them having nearly gotten him killed. Fi speaks up and acknowledges that they can get her to work for them. It was part of her agreement to get out of prison. They get to the case. Vincent Durov, a Ukrainan aerospace company owner, is about to sell some highly sensitive ballistic tech to some bad people, but they don't know who's buying what, or when. The intel is in his safe and their asset is Durov's girlfriend. The last asset they had try to get into Durov's safe washed up on shore with an extra hole in his head. Michael says he'll be in on the job with Fi. Fi meets with Angela Flores, the CIA asset who is Durov's girlfriend. She promises to get Angela out when the job is done, but Angela is still nervous and says that's what the last guy said. Fi and Angela make a plan to tell Durov they worked in fashion together back in Milan and Fi needs a place to stay. Fi shows up at Durov's house and while her car gets a thorough security check, Durov decides to grope Fi himself and decides she's unarmed. He walks her into the mansion. Sam and Jesse head to the South Carolina and Jesse brings up the idea of a side arrangement with Thompson. He seems offended at the suggestion and they decide to meet again the next day. Inside Durov's house, Fi gets ready to attempt getting into the safe. With Michael, Bailey and Marano watching her back, Fi breaks into Durov's office. Durov returns earlier than expected, but Fi hangs around his office long enough to get a code from the safe. When Durov comes in and finds Angela and Fi near his office which he's told Angela is off limits they play it off as if Fi was trying to surprise him with a three-way. At a boutique, Bailey meets Fi and tries to tell her a plan for smuggling a drill into Durov's house to get into the safe. Fi's worried that everything she brings into the house will be screened, but she remembers that the guards never check Durov's car. She buys a belt and tells Bailey to tell Michael that they're going to need a mechanic. Bailey is uncomfortable with the plan but has no choice but to go along when one of Durov's men notices him talking to Fi and Fi has to pretend Bailey was hitting on her to get him to go away unnoticed. Fi stuffs the belt in the tailpipe of Durov's SUV before they leaving, pretending to fix her shoe. In their ongoing attempt to pay Thompson off for information on the sniper, Sam and Jesse return with a 50-year-old bottle of Scotch as an "apology" for having offended him the day before. Sam causally mentions that Jesse gets paid "half-a-million dollars a year," and then they tell Thompson that their boss, Mr. Krueger (played by Michael earlier) wants to hire him because he was impressed by the way he handled the bribery attempt. Thompson says he has a three-year contract. They start drinking the Scotch and talk about working in Dubai while sharing some laughs. As Sam and Jesse are about to leave, Thompson asks for more details on the job offer. On their way home from shopping, Durov's car breaks down. Fi suggests they go to a local mechanic. When one of Durov's men says the address of one they can use, Fi texts the info to Michael. Michael, Bailey and Manaro go to the mechanic's shop and try to take over the place. The owner doesn't buy their story and Michael has to take care of the guy himself. Durov and his men are suspicious when they arrive at the mechanic and no one is around, but Michael finally emerges in a mechanic's outfit and says he was cleaning up in the back. In Durov's garage, Fi removed the safe-drilling tools from under the SUV which Michael had presumably planted and puts them into a suitcase. Angela is going to have to set off carbon monoxide alarms to give Fiona the time she needs to get into the safe. Michael cuts into the mansion's gas line, much to the chagrin of Bailey and Manaro. Thompson signs the contract for his new job, but rebuffs when Sam and Jesse tell him they want him to bring along some of Pryon's snipers. He's hesitant, but then decides to let Sam and Jesse go through the files while he's "busy" doing other things. They look through files and come across the sniper who must have done the job, but there are only initials: T.G. Thompson tells them that person is not on the table and is "off the books." While Durov watches a soccer game, Fi works her safe-breaking magic. Angela is supposed to get off the carbon monoxide alarm to get them all to evacuate the house. But Angela comes into the office to see how Fi is going. Fi has the safe open and is taking the files from it when Angela tells her she's changed the plan, while pointing a gun at Fi. Michael and the CIA guys are waiting in the van for the carbon monoxide alarm to go off, but nothing happens. Inside, Angela has taken the files from Durov's safe, downloaded them onto a flash drive and having tied Fi up to the safe. Angela is not an CIA asset, but a thief who is selling the ballistics technology. She leaves a bomb inside the safe, which she tells Fi is going to leave her in little bits and make it look like she was trying to blow up the safe and it went wrong. Angela leaves with the flash drive and just over 8 minutes left on the time bomb. Fi breaks free from the cuffs, but she's still locked in the office. Angela shot the code keypad out of the wall. Michael calls Fi to tell him what's going on. Fi tells him to lock the place down, even though she's Fi thinks she has a better chance to survive with Angela still inside, as well. Michael sets up a van to blow up as he crashes it into the gates of Durov's mansion jumping out just before the blast. Angela, who was trying to leave the grounds, is pulled back inside by a guard. She drops her flash drive into a bush on the way back inside. Another of Durov's men tells him Fiona broke into his office and was trying to get into the safe. Durov demands that Angela come with him. In the office, Fi tries to tell Durov that Angela planted the bomb, but Angela claims she couldn't have done it. With just over a minute before it's going to go off, Fi calls Angela's bluff and gives Durov directions for disarming the bomb. Just as a guard is about to follow Fi's directions, Angela stops him and disarms the bomb herself, obviously proving she was the one who planted it in the first place. Durov puts his gun under Angela's chin, but Fi talks him down. She explains that the CIA thinks he's selling technology to terrorists, but the truth is that Angela is the one doing it. Fi tells Durov that if he kills Angela, there won't be any way to prove who was trying to sell to terrorists. She tells him that either he or Angela would die in prison based on his next move. He pulls the gun down and tells his men to get both Fi and Angela out of his sight. Bailey and Marano ask Fi if she'll agree to claim in the official report that Angela was the target all along. Fi tells them to write whatever they want, but tells them to lose the agreement she signed with the CIA. Michael looks at the file on "T.G." and is frustrated. He and Sam agree they have to go back to Vale and tell him they need a team that would point back to "T.G." Michael and Sam meet Vale at a restaurant and he looks upset. He asks Michael and Sam what they're up to, and tells them that based on their requests it was clear they were looking for Tyler Gray. He refuses to talk about it anymore, and tells Michael that he wants them to leave him alone -- and to call off the guy who was following him. Michael tells him they had no one following him. Just as Vale stands up, he's hit with a bullet out of nowhere. He's hit a second time and everyone hits the deck. Michael crouches over Vale and shouts, "Who is Tyler Gray?" But Vale is gone. Cast *Michael Westen *Fiona Glenanne *Jesse Porter *Sam Axe *Madeline Westen *Angela Flores *Vincent Durov *Gabriel Manaro *Matthew Bailey *Andrew Thompson *Jack Vale *Al *Antonio Notes Client: Matthew Bailey & Gabriel Manaro (CIA officers) Bad Guys: Angela Flores (CIA asset/thief), Vincent Durov (black market entrepreneur) Category:Burn Notice episodes Category:Season 6